Boston, MA – The Architectural Team (TAT) announced completion of the first phase of a major mixed-use neighborhood redevelopment on a prominent site in Boston. The multiple-building project promises to provide significant new clinical and research facilities for the medical community while returning an important mental health institution to its historical location and expanding the reach of a major affordable housing community.
Located between the Brigham and Women’s Hospital campus and the Riverway, within a quarter-mile of four other hospital campuses, the revitalization is the product of a collaborative partnership that has brought together Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (a 1,500-unit affordable housing community), the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the state’s Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM), the agency responsible for disposition of public property.
The Architectural Team, in consultation with the hospital’s architect, Linea 5, of Boston, developed the master plan, that involved the demolition of the existing abandoned 184,000sf state mental health hospital. Four new buildings were designed in its place, and the first phase, now completed, consists of The Binney Building, a clinical and office facility, as well as “The Partial Hospital and Fenwood Inn” – a clinical and residential mental-health center that marks the long-anticipated return of the state’s Department of Mental Health to the neighborhood. As part of its Master Planning role, TAT designed the exterior architecture of the two first-phase buildings with Linea 5.
These two new buildings, which broke ground in 2010, will be followed by two more: a 350,000sf clinical and research facility for Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a 16-story, 200,000sf residential building with 156 living units for the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard. The Architectural Team will serve as Architect-of-Record..
TAT’s design of The Binney Building exterior projects a sense of the hospital’s present and future technical leadership while the Fenwood Inn combines an approachable residential scale and massing with materials that suggest both permanence and a public mission. Along the Riverway, The Architectural Team designed the residential tower as an iconic gateway marker to the LMA, visible from important vistas along Brookline Avenue as well as the Riverway itself.
“While most mixed-use projects combine residential and commercial uses, the Mass Mental Health redevelopment is unique in its blend of residential and institutional programs,” says The Architectural Team’s Liu. “This approach has proven that such uses can not only coexist successfully, but even enhance one another.”
The ideas implemented in the Longwood master plan can be adapted to other, larger-scale projects in many U.S. cities where proposed uses may have previously been considered mutually exclusive, according to John Messervy, Director of Capital and Facilities Planning for Partners Real Estate.
“Key to the success of the Mass Mental Health Center redevelopment was conceiving it as a joint development strategy and ensuring the successful resolution of both institutional and residential needs,” Messervy explains. “Many cities could apply this kind of joint strategy as a model of how to develop the no-man’s land where residential and institutional worlds meet.”
